2024 K-pop World Festival held in Kathmandu

By A Staff Reporter,Kathmandu, July 8: The Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Nepal held the ‘2024 K-Pop World Festival’ at the Nepal Academy Hall, Kamaladi, on Saturday.

The ‘K-pop World Festival’ is an annual event which was first held in 2011 in Changwon City, South Korea. The 2024 K-pop World Festival will be held in Changwon in October this year.

The K-pop World Festival aims to promote the understanding of Korea using Hallyu content with active participation from foreigners. For this purpose, each Korean embassy around the world organises the regional preliminary rounds of the K-pop World Festival.

The Embassy of the Republic of Korea hosted the K-pop World Festival in Kathmandu in 2016, 2018, and annually from 2019 to 2023, except in 2020 when it was cancelled due to COVID-19.

In 2016, Mongolian Namja represented Nepal in the final round of the K-pop World Festival in Korea.

This year, the preliminary round in Nepal was held online from June 10, 2024, to June 23, 2024. Over 30 teams registered for the contest by sending participation videos of their chosen K-pop songs. Among them, 12 teams were selected under three categories: Dance Group, Dance Solo, and Vocal. The final round of the Regional Preliminary Round took place on Saturday at the Nepal Academy Hall, Kamaladi, Kathmandu.

The three teams from the Regional Preliminary Round of Nepal – the best team from the Dance Group Category, AURELIA; the best Solo Dance Category, Smart Sunuwar and the best Vocal Category, Anjali Nepali were selected in the first round of screening. These three teams' performance videos will be sent to Korea for final evaluation.

Ambassador of the Republic of Korea to Nepal,  Park Taeyoung, welcomed and thanked the participants and audience members who made this event a memorable one.  He further mentioned that the Korean wave has captivated the imagination of youngsters in Nepal, especially through K-Pop, K-dramas, K-Beauty and Korean Fashion.

He stated that this trend would further continue to strengthen cultural exchanges between Korea and Nepal.